These are recipes for the typical sort of fish you will see in a market or go out and catch yourself. “Normal” fish, meaning fish without extra sets of bones, that don’t have common food prejudices against them, are unusually ugly, slimy or otherwise visually disadvantaged. Recipes for these more unusual fish can be found here.

Keep in mind that these species designations are merely suggestions. One of the beauties of fish cookery is that you can always sub in one fish for another. So look at the recipes first, then the fish species.

And all my salmon and trout recipes are on a different page — I have so many they needed on. For salmon and trout recipes, click here.

This list of recipes is far more idiosyncratic than comprehensive. What’s more, they are in two places: Here, on Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, and on my old website, the About.com Fish & Seafood cooking pages. I ran that site until 2009, but many of my recipes are still online over there.

Basics

Some baseline techniques you will find useful as you come across various fish and seafood. Many of these apply to so many different kinds of seafood it’s worth compiling them here.

Don’t waste the collars on your big fish! I almost always do this with striped bass, but any large fish will work with this recipe. Grilled, these meaty, fatty bits are like pickin’ chicken bones, only better.

Another Sicilian tuna recipe, this one is perfect for the tail ends of the tuna, which are pretty tough. Grind the trim off a tuna and you will not waste anything. And fear not: These meatballs are not “fishy” at all — they are shockingly meaty.

Smoked bluefish mashed into a rough pate or rillette, this is a winner on crackers. One of my go-to appetizers when I can get my hands on bluefish. Mackerel, wahoo, skipjack tuna or jacks work well here, too.

Sometimes, when you catch fish in warm water, they can be mushy. This happened to me with some crappies. So I decided to chop up the fillets and make them into Asian-style meatballs — deep-fried, of course.